Vampire Crush (8 page)

Idrive like a maniac. Any cops unlucky enough to be caught in my path would be justified in thinking that I had a blood alcohol level in the “legal y dead” range. But even as I race through yel ow lights and tear through the suburbs, Lindsay says nothing besides a few curt directions that bring us to a white ranch with red shutters and a mailbox shaped like a rooster.

I unlock the passenger-side door, and the click echoes in the silence. She doesn’t get out, just sits, staring straight ahead with her hands clenched in her lap as the front porch light throws her profile into stark relief. Her mouth twitches like she’s trying to figure out where to start.

“That was a mean thing you did,” she says. The car is warm, but she’s shivering.

Whatever I was expecting—and it was something along the lines of “Vampires are real and they want our braiiinnns, omigod, omigod, omigod”—it wasn’t this.

“I know. You have every reason to hate me,” I say, undoing my seat belt and twisting to face her. “But right now there are more important things to—”

“Stop!” she yel s, close to tears. “I don’t want to talk about that, I want to talk about this. I know you view me as your competition, okay? I view you as mine, too. But not in a way that would ever make me sabotage you by manipulating a guy who likes me to not give you an interview. By the way, your boyfriend’s a vampire, so … nice going there.”

I swal ow a snotty response about James not being my boyfriend. “Real y, Lindsay, we need to talk about what we’re going to do.”

“He almost kil ed me,” she blurts. “I was almost murdered by a vampire. I can’t … I can’t understand that. I don’t want to understand that.” She takes a ragged breath. “I thought we were friends.”

It takes me a second to realize that she means her and me. “We are friends,” I say weakly.

“No,” she says, hard enough to make me flinch. “I mean, I’ve tried to be yours. And since you didn’t seem to show as much disdain for me as you do for everyone else, I thought you were trying to be mine, too.” She reaches down to wrestle with the buckle of her seat belt, but it doesn’t stop her tirade. “I mean, do you ever wonder why you have no friends?”

“I have friends.”

“Not people you talk to sometimes,” she insists. “Friends. Like, come-over-and-do-something-with-me-on-Friday friends. It’s not that people don’t like you, there’s just a wal . A know-it-al , too-good-for-everything wal that keeps people from getting close. Although, after today, who knows if they should.” She wipes at her mottled cheeks and then pushes open her door. “Anyway, thanks so much for the ride home, and give James my gratitude. Then tel him that I’m making up everything about him for the article, because I want him to stay away from me. You too,” she says and then runs inside without a backward glance.

When I get home there’s a smal violet envelope resting at the foot of the front door. Inside I find a magazine page whose ragged edges suggest it was ripped out with quite a bit of rage. “Are You a Good Friend?” the quiz asks. Scribbled across it in what I pray is red nail polish is one word: “No.”

I start to cry. You would think this would have happened sometime closer to my brush with death, but this is the tipping point. Because Violet is right—I am a horrible friend who wil not only lead you to your doom in the forest, but wil also unwittingly hold hands with your ex-boyfriend. The front door opens as I am wiping sloppy tears off my cheeks.

“You know that you are supposed to cal if you’re going to be later than—,” my dad starts but then stops when he sees my face. “Are you hurt? What’s wrong?”

“I’m fine,” I sniffle. He’s wearing the clothes that mean he’s about to tinker with something in the garage: an old pair of corduroy pants and a flannel shirt that he stil tucks in. It makes him look both dignified and woodsy, like a professor at a school for lumberjacks. Overcome by a wave of affection, I drop my backpack with a thud and lurch toward him for a hug. “I didn’t mean to be late.”

I’ve taken him by surprise. “It’s okay. Marcie and I are just a little on edge. Your sister came home screaming that her life was over. Marcie’s up there with her now. I think it has to do with that boy she was dating.”

Caroline. I had forgotten al about her. “They broke up,” I say. “I promise you that it’s for the best.”

“I trust your judgment on that.” Dad shoves his hands in the pockets of his corduroys and peers at me quizzical y. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Just a bad day.”

I can’t tel if he’s bought it. He just studies me for a few more seconds and then pats me on the back before tel ing me that he’l be in the garage if I need to talk. I find Marcie and Caroline in her bedroom. They sit on her pink bedspread surrounded by a coterie of stuffed animals, three of which are currently being strangled in Caroline’s arms. If Grover were not already blue, he would be now. Her head is buried in a pil ow that rests in Marcie’s lap. It may prevent Caroline’s wails from coming out clearly, but it doesn’t dim the sorrow. Marcie is gently stroking her hair, adding an understanding “I know” at every pause. When she sees me at the door, she holds a finger to her lips. Suddenly Caroline’s head twists to the side. “… And then he said, ‘I fear you are not who I am looking for, Caroline,’”

she says in a startlingly good imitation that’s unfortunately ruined by the half sob, half hiccup at the end. “What does that even mean? Who knows what they’re looking for at seventeen?”

“I know, dear. That’s what I told you earlier,” Marcie soothes, moving a strand of tangled blond hair away from her daughter’s eyes. Once her vision is cleared, Caroline spots me in front of her.

“So I guess you heard,” she sniffles from Marcie’s lap.

“Vlad broke up with me at the end of school today. Everyone heard. Even Ms. Kate.” This last bit sets off a new wave of tears.

“I know. I’m sorry, Caroline.” I perch on the sliver of bed not covered by something fuzzy. “You have to believe me when I say that you are better off.”

At first she doesn’t respond, and I’m afraid that I’ve said the wrong thing. I didn’t think it was an “I told you so,” but occasional y some know-it-al creeps in without my permission.

“Yeah,” she final y says. “You were right. He’s a jerk. Also

… ,” she starts, but then cranes her head to look up at Marcie. “Mom, cover your ears.”

Marcie dutiful y brings her hands up, obviously in a mood to humor her distraught daughter. But over her head, to me, she mouths, “Tel me if it’s drugs.”

“Also,” Caroline continues, satisfied that Marcie’s hands are soundproof, “he was not a great kisser. He bit my lip. And he real y wanted me to take off my shirt.”

It’s nice to know that the breakup hasn’t affected Caroline’s desire to TMI, even when in front of parents. It used to embarrass me, but now I sort of admire it. And if Vlad’s bizarre question to Lindsay in the woods is any indication, it only adds to the evidence suggesting that Vlad thinks this girl he’s looking for has some sort of mark on her body. But what? A mole? A big bul ’s eye? A tattoo that says, “I am dying to be a vampire groupie”? Definitely number one on my “Things to Find Out” list. Wel , maybe number two, after “Figure out what exactly ‘mind-wiping’

entails.”

I start to make my exit. “Caroline, you know where I am if you want to talk,” I say and give her shoulder a squeeze. She throws her arms around my neck in an enthusiastic, snotty hug that squishes my arms to my chest before pul ing back abruptly.

“Why are you wearing a scarf?” she asks, curiosity overcoming self-pity. I had wrapped an old black scarf I found in the backseat around my neck to hide the puncture wounds. Trust Caroline to sniff out a fashion faux pas in the midst of an emotional breakdown.

“I think I’m getting a cold,” I say.

“Wel , it doesn’t match your outfit,” she says, starting to tear up again. “That real y goes more with a peacoat.”

To make it up to her, I sit through a few more rounds of Vlad-bashing. When I’m final y able to escape to my room, I head to the floor-length mirror and de-scarf my neck. The skin is smeared with blood, and while I can stil see the deep impression of two tiny holes, they seem to have stopped bleeding. That’s … something.

After erasing as much vampire action from my neck as possible, I search for the happiest pajamas that I can find, final y settling on a pair from three Christmases ago that is dotted with smiley, spouting whales. The shirt is a little too tight across the chest and I have a feeling that an impulsive squat might spel sayonara for the bottoms, but they are comfy and worn in al the right places.

I start to slide under the covers, but the thought of trying to sleep with, wel , things lurking outside seems sil y, if not dangerous. Instead, I curl up in my desk chair to keep watch, noting with surprise that it has started to rain. Raindrops distort my view of outside, fracturing the light from the nearby street lamps and blurring everything outside. The one thing I can see clearly is the window across the way. James’s window.

“We’l talk,” he said. Twice.

Suddenly the room feels stuffy, claustrophobic. I open the window to let in a gust of chil ed air, sending whatever raindrops that were stil clinging to the glass scurrying to the bottom of the pane. The silver rivers they leave in their wake slice my view of James’s house down the middle, and it is a relief. Now I can’t see anything.

Eventualy, I crawl into bed, but I don’t sleep wel. My dreams resemble a flickering black-and-white horror movie. I’m in a cave swatting bats out of my hair, then fending off spiders with a can of spray paint. Final y, I end up on a windswept moor with a silver and gray wolf. He asks me to dance. I refuse. He retaliates by chewing on my toes.

My eyes snap open. It would be nice if my brain could take this seriously.

The temperature dropped in the night, and while the rain is lighter now, it’s stil heavy enough to drum against the attic roof. Wrapping myself in a faded afghan, I climb out of bed and shiver my way across the cold hardwood to the open window. Sliding behind my desk chair, I grasp the splintered frame and push down.

Suddenly, a hand snakes up from the darkness, and I jump back just as four fingers clamp over the sil . Stumbling over my desk chair, I crash to the floor, feet caught up in the netting of my afghan. I claw frantical y at the mess around my legs as the hand becomes an arm and then a head and then a torso. A body vaults into view, fil ing the frame, blocking the outside light.

I have two options. Run downstairs with a rabid vampire in hot pursuit or lurch forward, close the window, and pray that the mixture of screen and glass is resistant to fists. So far the intruder isn’t even scratching at the screen. For an assassin, he’s taking his time, and closing the window might buy me more. Muttering “Close and lock, close and lock” like a mantra, I spring up and rush forward, hitting the window and pushing down with al my might until I hear a satisfying snick.

My attack brings more than I bargained for. Startled by my sudden appearance, the intruder loses his grip on one of the frame’s sides. He swings backward like a saloon door, one hand clutching the upper eave of the window, one foot balanced on the outside cement ledge, and al other limbs dangling in space. The ful glow of the streetlight floods his face, and I find myself staring into James’s face—James’s very annoyed, very angry face.

For one crazy, hurtling second I heave a sigh of relief; if forced to choose, he is the better option. But then again, I would also rather drown than be eaten by snakes. Before I can figure out the next course of action, James begins to move, and move strangely. He swings his body back to and fro until he has enough momentum to bring his other foot back on the sil . Steady once again, he crouches in front of me, a particularly nimble gargoyle. So much for getting the upper hand.

“Let me in,” he says, the glass muffling his voice. He’s soaking wet. His green shirt is plastered to his shoulders like a second skin, and beads of water race down his nose. I feel a twinge of sympathy, but then tel down his nose. I feel a twinge of sympathy, but then tel myself to snap out of it. Twinges of sympathy are better than being turned into an amnesia zombie.

“I don’t care to be mind-wiped, thank you,” I say through the glass. Little clouds of steam appear and vanish between each word.

“I’m not going to mind-wipe you!” he says. “I just want to explain.”

My eyes take in his frown, his narrowed eyes. “Don’t take this the wrong way,” I say, “but you seem a little angry. Why should I believe you?”

“Because I am tel ing you that I won’t.” I must stil look skeptical, because he brings his palm up to the window, pushing down so hard that I can see the smal traces of his heart line. “I swear.”

I check his eyes and body language for signs of deviousness, but there are none. I bite my lip, torn.
This is
the moment,
I think.
This is the moment where you can
make a very smart choice or a very stupid choice.

“Sophie,” he pleads again when he sees me wavering.

“You’ve known me my entire life. You have to trust me. I’m stil … just, please.”

Memories of the last week’s conversations flicker through my mind. It had al felt so normal, just like Old James and Old Sophie. Before I can think about it any more, I open the window halfway.

I am going to make the stupid choice.

“Listen,” I say and then lean over to make sure that there’s no glass preventing him from hearing me clearly. “You can come in—but make any sudden movements and I swear I wil run downstairs for the garlic. Marcie buys it in bulk. Already chopped, too, if that means anything.”

His face breaks into a smile that would be more appropriate on the face of a lottery winner than someone I just threatened with prepackaged foodstuffs. He yanks up the screen without the slightest hesitation. If he’d wanted to bust in without asking, that barrier would have bought me a whole .42 seconds—a grim thought. His hands reach for the window next, but I bang on the glass until he lets go.

“I want a verbal commitment.”

He dutiful y parrots that he wil under no circumstances fiddle with my mind. He caps it off with a Boy Scout salute.

“The salute was a bit much,” I say, pushing the window the rest of the way up. I sweep my hand back in a welcoming gesture. “James, you may come inside.”

“Aw shucks, Sophie, that’s swel . I sure do hope my manners are as nice as yours one day.” He ducks through the window and closes it behind him.

“I thought I had to invite you in.”

“Not real y, no,” he corrects before stooping over to shake out his wet hair.

I dodge to the side to avoid an inadvertent shower. “I’m pretty sure that—”

“You don’t.” He stands up straight, surveying me as though he’s suddenly seeing me in a new, geeky light. “How many vampire movies have you watched?”

More than a few, if I’m being honest. In retrospect, I should have cried vampire that first day in the auditorium, but we’l chalk that misfire up to general sanity. “Not that many,” I mutter. “And there’s a pretty big consensus on the invite thing, I’l have you know.”

“Wel , the consensus is wrong. And besides, if you thought I needed an invite to get in, why did you freak out at the window?”

It’s a valid point, but not one that I feel like acknowledging.

“I didn’t freak out. I just thought you were the neighborhood pervert. He likes me. A lot,” I say as he starts to smile.

“What?”

“Did you wear the cape just for me?”

“Huh?”

He points to my shoulders. “The cape.”

I look down. At some point in my terror I had seen fit to tie the afghan around my shoulders. Oh my God.

“It’s just something I wear sometimes,” I shrug, untying the knot at my throat in what I hope is an offhand manner. Selfconscious, I cross the room to sit on the bed cross-legged, tucking my feet beneath my knees until not even the pink of a pinkie toe is visible.

“You don’t have to sit al the way over there,” he says, raising an eyebrow in the way that always made me jealous back when I aspired to be an arch vil ain. “I don’t bite.”

Considering earlier events, it’s a gutsy joke. “How long have you been waiting to say that?”

“Since I moved home,” he says, taking a seat by the leg of my desk.

“Nice.”

We lapse into silence. I lean my head back against the wal , keeping watch on him from the corner of my eye. He’s brought his knees up closer to his chest, and his hands rest calmly on top of them, patient and relaxed.

“You know, you don’t get a free pass here. If you want me to real y trust you, you have to tel me everything. You have to answer al of my questions, no matter how stupid or invasive they are.”

“Okay,” he says without hesitation.

“I mean it,” I say, looking at him directly. “No evasion.”

“Okay.”

“Fine, then,” I say archly. “What did you do with the flip-flop you stole in third grade? I never found it in your yard.”

He doesn’t miss a beat. “I dug a hole and buried it by the swing set.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah. With my hands,” he adds. “The neighbor’s dog watched me the entire time. I had to wash under my nails for weeks to get the dirt out.”

“Okay. How did you become a vampire?”

He blinks a few times. “You go from zero to sixty, don’t you?”

“It’s the best way to get honest answers,” I say. “Why?

Backing out?”

“No. But I wonder if you’l answer a question for me first.”

If it has anything to do with my blood type, I’m going to kick myself. “What?” I ask, suspicious.

“What bothers you more?” he asks, leaning forward. “The fact that I’m a vampire or the fact that you have me here, sitting in your bedroom, after midnight? Because I actual y think it’s the second one.”

He flashes a toothy smile. In any other time, under any other circumstances, I would almost think that he was …

“Are you flirting with me?” I ask, stunned. “Now?”

I think I see a flicker of disappointment wash across his features, but it could just be a shadow. “Please,” he says cool y. “I was just curious. And besides, I thought the whole vampire thing was supposed to be sexy. I just wanted to make sure you weren’t going to start giggling and twirling your hair.”

“I think you’re safe. One, vampires lose a little something when one of them tries to snack on your neck, and two, I’m stil not sure what you’re doing back. So spil ,” I order, frowning when al that fol ows is a few seconds of awkward silence. “I’l get you started. Once upon a time, I met someone with real y pointy teeth, and they said—”

“Okay,” James cuts me off. “This isn’t easy, you know?

What you’re going to hear isn’t one of my best moments. After my parents died, it was … hard.”

“Was it real y a fire?” I ask, bracing myself for a story of how the fire was a cover-up, of midnight vampire attacks and bloody handprints smeared across white sheets. Instead he surprises me with a short laugh.

“Yep. Just one of those random tragedies everyone reads about in the newspaper and everyone forgets three days later. Except for the people it happens to.”

It’s hard to imagine that when I was cursing the day-to-day indignities of being a high school freshman, he was dealing with having his life suddenly ripped out from under him. Imagining James as a sudden orphan causes me to pul the afghan back up and wrap it, mummylike, around my shoulders. He’s stopped talking again, but for once I don’t poke or prod.

“Anyway,” he continues so suddenly that I jump, “after my parents died, they had to figure out what to do with me. My grandparents had died long before I was born, and my parents didn’t have any siblings. If they had left it up to me, I would have taken my chances on my own, but I was sixteen, and legal y that meant I had to be placed in a foster home.”

A foster home seems so … clinical. “Were the people nice?”

James shrugs. “I guess. They lived in an old renovated farmhouse with acres of fields around it. Susanna bred some form of German shepherd, and Ian spent most of his time with old tractor parts. An old country bus picked me up for school. When I went.”

“When you went?”

“Yeah. I probably skipped half the time, but I passed. Barely,” he snorts and then opens his eyes. “You know, when you’re happy it’s hard to imagine not caring about anything. But I didn’t. Not myself, not my future, not anyone. Sometimes I imagined what it would have been like if we’d never moved, if we stil lived next to you and your family, and if you and I stil spent most of our days coming up with the perfect insults for each other. I’d stay up late at night, imagining conversations that could have happened on the way to school, in our backyards, over the phone … ,” he says and then shoots me an embarrassed glance. “It was stupid—I had other friends, and you and I didn’t even talk that much after sixth grade.”

I don’t know what to say. I feel like I should admit something personal as wel —that when he kissed my cheek on the hammock I was just pretending to be asleep. That the day his family moved away I cried.
Or,
a little voice inside whispers,
you could sit closer. That’s a sure sign of
emotional solidarity.
That little voice is right, and from the way James is stil looking at me, I’m going to have to come up with something a little more supportive than a few jokes. Trailing a clump of covers, I scoot to the edge of the bed and then slide to the floor. Now there’s not as much space separating us, but even that measly six feet has taken on the proportions of a footbal field. Do I scoot over and loop my arm around his shoulders, or is leaning forward with a concerned expression, Oprah-like, okay?

I’m stil wrestling with myself, eyeing the floor like it’s Mount Everest and wondering how the whole vampire thing fits into the equation, when James’s voice pipes up.

“Comfortable now?” he asks with an off-kilter smile that says he knows exactly what stupidity I’ve been debating.

“The bed was too soft,” I say in a rush, which makes him grin even more. The good news is that he’s smiling again; apparently al I need to do to make him feel better is tap into my inner social moron. “I’m so sorry, James.”

He shrugs again. “Not your fault.”

“But that stil doesn’t explain where the fangs come in. My money’s on a certain girlfriend from the wrong side of the afterlife.”

His expression turns cagey. “Possibly.”

“You mean there are several choices?” I ask, and then resist the urge to bang on my chest. Where did that shril ness come from? Clearing my throat to evict whatever jealous-girlfriend type has come in and changed the wal paper, I strive for something calmer. “I mean, the only logical choice is Violet.”

“I had other girlfriends, you know.”

“I’m not saying that the only girl who would find you attractive is one with serious codependency issues. I’m saying that I’ve been English buddies with Violet this past week, and she’s said a few things that are final y starting to make sense. And then there’s the fact that she flipped in the lunchroom when she saw us talking.”

“Okay, it was Violet.”

“Did you lose a bet? Check the wrong box on a survey?

Because she’s kind of weird.”

“Funny,” he says. “So I told you how Susanna and Ian’s farm was in the boonies, right? There were maybe three houses within a five-mile radius. Two of those were owned by old retired couples. The other one, the closest one, was deserted. Or so everyone thought.”

“
Dum dum dum
.”